a morning at the cemetery

The snapshots above are from Friday's excursion to Spring Grove Cemetery. It was my first time, and I was blown away by the beauty: gorgeous mausoleums, ornate monuments, flowering trees, and so much wildlife I almost got a chub. Zoey hasn't been able to stop talking about the geese and the turtles; on Saturday she went to a birthday party, and I was all she could talk about. "Guy" this and "Guy" that. She told everyone how I take her to the woods, how I chase her around the house, how she rides on my back while I pretend to be a horse, how I make silly faces and weird noises as she squeals in laughter, how I capture animals and let her touch them. Ashley and I plan on taking her and Chloe to all sorts of parks and nature preserves this summer; all winter they've spent their days watching Nickelodeon and playing games on their tablets, and it's about time they get outside and play like real kids.

This morning before work I returned to Spring Grove Cemetery for a "Prayer Walk," just walking the paths, sitting along the ponds with turtles and geese to keep me company, and meditating on passages of scripture from the much-unappreciated Book of Titus. During my wanderings I snapped some decent pictures of spring in full bloom:

As I was lost in pondering prayer, the lyrics of a song from the radio kept getting stuck in my head. This past week has been difficult, as I've been wrestling with everything that happened nearly a year ago, and there are times when I feel so low, discouraged, defeated, and hopeless. It often feels like this dark shadow will never pass. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, bite your tongue (a lesson I've still yet to learn), and keep trucking along. The song that kept popping into my head is Tenth Avenue North's You Are More. 

there's a girl in the corner with tear stains on her eyes

from the places she's wandered and the shame she can't hide

she says, "How did I get here? I'm not who I once was.

And I'm crippled by the fear that I've fallen too far to love."

but don't you know who you are, what's been done for you?

you are more than the choices that you've made,

you are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

you are more than the problems you create,

you've been remade

well she tries to believe it, that she's been given new life

but she can't shake the feeling that it's not true tonight

she knows all the answers and she's rehearsed all the lines

and so she'll try to do better, but then she's too weak to try

you are more than the choices that you've made,

you are more than the sum of your past mistakes,

you are more than the problems you create,

you've been remade

'cause this is not about what you've done,

but what's been done for you

this is not about where you've been,

but where your brokenness brings you to

this is not about what you feel,

but what he felt to forgive you,

and what he felt to make you loved

"blessed be Your name"

This song has been my jam as of late.

Blessed be Your name in the land that is plentiful

Where your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name when I'm found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name when the sun's shining down on me

When the world's all as it should be

Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering

Though there's pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name.

Every blessing you pour out I'll turn back to praise

When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

You give and take away.

You give and take away.

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be Your name.

#caesarscreek, et. al.

Ashley and I went hiking at Caesar's Creek last week, and during our explorations we had lots of hard talks about difficult things. Our conversation turned to how I've been doing with my struggles in the wake of everything with the Wisconsinite. I told her how I feel almost ashamed for still wrestling with things; I've been through heartache before, but never anything on par with what she brought me. She told me that it's understandable for me to still be working through things, since I invested so much of my heart and life in the relationship. If she were able to cut me out of her life and just keep trucking along, and I'm still trying to deal with the mess, it just goes to show the great disparity between my level of commitment and her own, between the meaning in my words and the lack of meaning in hers. Ashley's amazing, not least because she wants to be my support and encouragement through this challenging time. I think that says a lot about her; most women wouldn't be too keen on hearing their boyfriends talk about such things. But Ashley, she isn't like most women.

I told Ashley that I feel out of joint, a shadow of who I used to be.

I feel like the rope snapped, and this time I just let go.

I feel absent purpose, adrift and abandoned.

There's no passion in my soul, just a deadness in the limbs. 

Things just don't feel "right." Everything feels a little bit off.

"Sometimes I feel like a mermaid in a glass bottle stranded in the Sahara. I wanna pop the cork and crawl out into the sands and scurry with the baby crabs into the ocean, where I belong." That's one hell of a weird way to say "I want things to feel right again." But they probably won't feel right for a while, at least until I'm able to move beyond my love for the Wisconsinite into whatever God has for me. 

I won't lie: I still love her, or at least a part of me does. 

I keep waiting for the day I don't love her anymore. 

I yearn for that day, pray for that day, fight for that day. 

But what if my love for her doesn't ever go away? 

What if all I can do is wait for the day when that love doesn't bring me such pain? 

Not a day goes by absent the pain of what happened. Not a day passes when that hurt and defeat doesn't hang over me like a dark cloud. Things such as joy, peace, and confidence have become crumbling memories. I've never loved anyone the way I loved her, and the fact that the love hasn't withered makes me feel broken as a person and guilty as a boyfriend. Ashley deserves better than me, better than what I'm capable of offering her. 

There are times when the hurt and pain becomes so overwhelming that I just want to run, and run, and keep running, to never stop. Hurt people hurt people, and my biggest fear is causing Ashley the same kind of torment that Mandy caused me. All I can do is keep taking it day-by-day, as I've been doing for the past year, and hope that something changes, that God grants me healing. I grit my teeth and move forward in obedience to Him as I wrestle with questions absent answers. Why would God bring the two of us together, why would He seemingly answer my prayer, only to take it away and expose me to the worst sort of pain I've ever felt? If that's not torment enough, why does He refuse to free me from the burden of loving her? If I'm not meant to be with her, why doesn't He take the pain away, knowing all the problems it creates? I wish I could scrub my hands, my past, and my heart of her. I wish the two of us had never met. How can someone who brought such joy deliver so much pain?

There are too many questions and no answers. Sometimes I lie awake at night consumed by memories and thoughts, questions that go nowhere. I pray into an impermeable silence, begging the Spirit to fill the void in my heart. I want to turn my back on her the way she turned her back on me, but the love she had for me (if you can even call it that) is a pale comparison to the burning, fierce, loyal, patient, and determined love I had for her. I'm terrified that I'll never be able to love again, that I'll be forced to choose between life alone or life with someone I don't love. That fear is genuine, and I pray that it won't be so. I want to work through these issues and come to some sort of clarity not only for myself but also for Ashley. She deserves love more than any woman I've known, and I feel so shitty because my heart isn't yet able to give her that sort of love. I want to be freed from my love for the Wisconsinite so that I can love Ashley with the same sort of love. If Ashley is an answer to my prayers, I want to love her the same way I loved Mandy. But part of me feels that the sort of love I had for Mandy isn't the norm, and every love I experience after her will be but a shadow compared to what we shared. Only time will tell.

In other news...

the (re)reformation

keep it classy, San Diego

The bad news is that ever since Ashley and I got together, I haven't stuck to my whole "reformation". The good news is that I haven't gained any weight (at least not a significant amount of weight). I'm still hopping about around 165 pounds (that there was a rabbit reference). Ashley and I have been trying to support one another in our own "lifestyle changes," but this is generally what happens: one of us confides a temptation, perhaps to go grab some Penn Station or Chipotle, in the hope that the other can support the one in fighting said temptation. What happens, almost invariably, is that we both end up at Penn Station or Chipotle. My hope is that doing a "check-in" once every 4-6 weeks will assist me in meeting my goals. So here's the first "check-in" since September of last year, and I'm weighing in at 165 pounds. Hopefully I'll be around 160 by the end of May!

Don't get me wrong, we're not too concerned about it. Neither one of us aspires to look like a model, and neither one of us will. Truth be told, I don't find skinny girls attractive, and my one condition, if I can call it that, is that Ashley stays away from a flat stomach. Thankfully she's got a little pouch after birthing two giant babies (and, yes, Chloe and Zoey were HUGE when they popped out of her womb), and that will never disappear (as an aside, I call her my "beautiful marsupial"). My distaste for twig girls, and my love for a little amount of blubber, is captured by Kate Davis' 1940s-era cover of Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass:

a cosmic post

Zoey has been running around saying she's going to kick everyone off the moon. In honor of her vibrant imagination, here is a cosmic post focused on our orbiting heavenly body!

#cabinfever

If I ever make a ton of money, I'm going to buy a patch of land in the mountains and build a rugged cabin absent electricity. There I will escape the trials of this life and immerse myself in the peaceful beauties of creation. Here's what it's going to look like (a man can dream can't he?!).

If the cabin never comes to fruition, this little stone-and-thatch hut would work, too:

the Hobbit Hole: 2015